Ive looked around and seen no solution to my problem, maybe someone here knows. I have a laptop with a M7 and whenever i run X using the ati or radeon driver, the screen is hideous. Vesa works fine and if i were to take a screenshot, it looks fine! I think it might be my screen/video/driver not working together. I have a XGA screen and have updated my modules from dri.sf.net

any help would be fantastic! vesa is slow_________________-- HAH! -- Amoeba --

I have an M7 and it works fine... perhaps you don't have a 32 bit depth screen in your XF86Config? I didn't initially (topped at 24 from XF86cfg) and the screen dropped to 8 bit color=hideous. I updated the file and now its fine.
Just a thought._________________I like tapes.

Guess this won't be any consolation - but you are not alone having problems getting Presario 2800 to work with the radeon drivers. Vesa driver works ok though.
Sadly not even xf-4.2.1 solved the striping problem (I surmise that's your problem too).
Strange thing is the radeon driver gives a perfect screen if I plug in an external TFT - I guess this suggests it's a matter of finding a correct modeline (and disabling EDID/DDC)

I have an Asus laptop w. a M7, and have been trying to get tvout. Anyone has any success with that? I tried installing ATI-4.2.0-15.i386.tar.gz and drm-kernel-1.2.0-15.tar.gz from gatos, but /var/log/XFree86.0.log still says

Hi,
> (EE) RADEON(0): [dri] RADEONDRIScreenInit failed because of a version mismatch.
for working DRI copy the radeon.o from the drm-kernel to
/lib/modules/*version*/kernel/drivers/char/drm/radeon.o
and you must enable /dev/agpgart and Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 DRI support)
and ! ATI Radeon as a module !